IDENTITY CRISIS

AS INDUSTRY TRANSFORMS AND NAVIGATES THE REALITIES OF CONTINUOUS DISRUPTIONS, BUSINESS SCHOOLS STRUGGLE TO STAY RELEVANT.

- BY AJITA SHASHIDHAR

A CHAT WITH ITC MD AND CHAIRMAN Sanjiv Puri is always insightful. However, if you really read between the lines, the one thing that strikes you is the enormous complexities of the business. Puri talks about 'mass-personalisation' and 'micro-segmentation' in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) segment. In the agribusiness space, he talks about 'value-added' agriculture, which involves a shift from generic to proprietary crops. He speaks about building cohorts and launching relevant brands for each cohort—Right Shift, a food brand targeted at the 45-plus consumer; Mother Sparsh, a specialised baby care brand; or ITC Baked Creations, a premium cookie brand which makes short shelf-life cookies. If the shelf life is just 15-30 days, it needs to be manufactured closer to the consumer, which would mean a different supply chain and go-to-market strategy. That's indeed complex!

Puri stresses upon the need to be swift and agile. At a time when disruptions are happening way too often, businesses need to have the capability of not just taking quick decisions, but also reversing strategies that they have been historically used to. And Puri isn’t the only one who is talking about speed and agility and navigating risks in business. Ask any corporate head honcho, and he/she will endorse it.

If one was to link all these aspects to business school education, it points to one big ask by the industry—groom industry-ready managers to manage complexities from the word go. The big question that follows is: are the current breed of managers being trained across the 4,000-odd business schools in the country industry-ready?

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